Golf Handicap Calculator
Enter your recent rounds and work out your Handicap Index using the World Handicap System method, plus the Course Handicap for the tees you're playing.
| Round | Gross score | Course rating | Slope | Differential | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | — | ||||
| 2 | — | ||||
| 3 | — |
Ticked differentials are the ones counting toward your index.
Tees you're playing
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Add at least 3 rounds — you have 0
This is an estimate based on the World Handicap System calculation. It is not an official Handicap Index. Official indexes in England are issued by England Golf through a club membership or iGolf.
Running a golf society? See how Card & Pencil handles this for you
How the World Handicap System works
The World Handicap System (WHS) has been in use since 2020 and replaced six separate regional systems, including the old CONGU system in Great Britain and Ireland. It gives every golfer a single Handicap Index — a measure of demonstrated ability, expressed to one decimal place — that is recognised anywhere in the world.
The index is built from a rolling record of your 20 most recent scores. Each score is adjusted for the difficulty of the course and the tees you played, converted into a Score Differential, and the lowest differentials in that record are averaged. Because it is rolling, the index moves as soon as a new score displaces the twenty-first oldest one.
What a Score Differential is, and how it is calculated
A Score Differential expresses how well you played relative to the difficulty of the course, on a standard scale. The formula is:
Score Differential = (113 ÷ slope rating) × (adjusted gross score − course rating)
Course rating is the score a scratch golfer is expected to shoot from those tees, written to one decimal place (for example 71.2). Slope rating measures how much harder the course plays for a bogey golfer than for a scratch golfer, on a scale of 55 to 155, where 113 is average. Adjusted gross score is your gross score with net double bogey applied as a maximum on each hole. The result is rounded to one decimal place.
Why only your best 8 of 20 rounds count
A handicap is meant to represent your demonstrated ability — what you can do when you play well — rather than your average round. Averaging everything would produce a number you beat only about half the time, which makes net competition between players of different standards unfair to the better player.
With a full 20-score record the lowest 8 differentials are averaged. With fewer scores a sliding scale applies: 1 of 3 with an adjustment of −2.0, 1 of 4 with −1.0, 1 of 5, 2 of 6 with −1.0, 2 of 7 or 8, 3 of 9 to 11, 4 of 12 to 14, 5 of 15 or 16, 6 of 17 or 18, and 7 of 19. The adjustments at the short end stop a small sample producing an index that is too high.
Course Handicap vs Handicap Index — the difference
Handicap Index is portable and course-independent. Course Handicap is the number of strokes you actually receive on a given course from given tees:
Course Handicap = Handicap Index × (slope ÷ 113) + (course rating − par)
Rounded to a whole number. A player with an index of 18.0 will receive more strokes from a hard set of tees than from an easy one, which is the point of the conversion. Many competitions then apply a handicap allowance to the Course Handicap — commonly 95% for individual strokeplay and lower figures for fourball formats.
Getting an official handicap without joining a club
In England, England Golf runs iGolf, a paid subscription for independent golfers that provides an official WHS Handicap Index without club membership. Scores are pre-registered and submitted through the MyEG app, and the index carries the same status as a club member's. Scotland (Scottish Golf's OpenPlay), Wales and Ireland operate comparable schemes.
The calculator on this page applies the WHS arithmetic to the rounds you enter, but the result is an estimate. It is not an official Handicap Index, because official indexes depend on scores being submitted and verified through an affiliated club or an independent scheme such as iGolf.
How golf societies handle handicaps for members without an official index
Most societies have a mix: some players hold a WHS index, others have never been club members. The usual approach is to take the official index where one exists, allocate an estimated index to everyone else from a few recent cards, and then adjust over time based on results.
Common adjustment conventions are cutting the winner by one or two shots, applying a maximum society handicap (often 24 or 28), and reviewing everyone once or twice a season. Whatever the rule, it should be written down and applied to everybody, because the fastest way to lose a society day is an argument about somebody's handicap on the eighteenth green.